Silence
by Anime Girl23
Summary: Kurt knew he missed a lot when he started dorming at Dalton, but someone definitely forgot to mention that during that time, Puck had moved into his house. Puck/Kurt slash
1. Chapter 1

Hey, everyone! Yet another fic, but this time, it's a three-shot. The other two chapters are already complete on my laptop. It's just finding the time to get it up. I'll hopefully get the next chapter up in a couple days. School is just a bit insane at the moment. As always, please review!

Disclaimer: Glee doesn't belong to me.

Silence  
>Chapter 1<p>

It was sometime around March that Burt finally caved and let Kurt take the live-in option at Dalton. The drive to and from every day had just been too much on his mind and on their wallets, so when Kurt had to call halfway home one day and ask his dad to pick him up because he'd almost fallen asleep at the wheel, they made their choice. Kurt was moved into his dorm by the end of that weekend.

He'd known going in that things would change. Even when he was commuting and living at home, he'd been starting to feel detached from his friends. Now that he was living away, he saw Mercedes less and less. He barely talked to the others. Finn, he occasionally saw when he'd come home on weekends, but then Blaine kissed him and became his boyfriend and...he stopped coming home.

Looking back now, he knew that he'd all but abandoned his new family for a guy and a relationship that didn't even end up working out. He and Blaine had been nice while they lasted, but crashed and burned a week before finals that June. He'd wanted to go home then, but he'd gotten wrapped up in studying and another weekend went by with Kurt shut up in his dorm room.

Moving out had been a long process. He didn't have many street clothes there since the other guys around Dalton tended to wear their uniforms a majority of the time, but his skin care products, trinkets, and everything had stacked up in the small single.

The room looked a hell of a lot bigger once all his stuff was crammed into the Navigator his dad had driven up.

Burt hadn't gotten there until dinnertime, foregoing his own to pick up his son. They'd gone to dinner together and talked on the ride back, but Kurt had been inside all of five seconds before he realized his dad had forgotten to mention a very important something.

Namely, Puck.

Living in his house.

He'd frozen in the doorway of the living room, eyes wide at the sight of Puck sitting on the couch (in PJs and looking too damned comfortable), feet curled under him as he and Finn watched some movie. Well, it was more Finn watching the movie. Puck was more focused on whatever he was scribbling in a notebook.

His dad smiled at them both, saying hi to Finn as he put a hand on Puck's shoulder, called him freaking _Noah_, and asked him how he was doing. Puck gave a small smile in return, more polite than anything (and wasn't that weird), and shrugged a shoulder before he inclined his head towards Finn. He rolled his eyes slightly and Kurt didn't know how, but it was like the former (ex-former? Current?) best friends spoke with their _eyes_ because a second later Finn said he'd see him later and Puck gave him an acknowledging nod (was Kurt crazy or did he _see_ a "welcome home"?) and disappeared upstairs.

"Forget to tell me something?" he shrilled.

"You said you were going to tell him, Finn!"

"I was! He never called me back! I wasn't going to tell him over a text!" Finn defended as he shut off the movie and looked at Kurt. "Um...Noah's living with us."

"Since when? And _Noah_?"

"He didn't tell him, did he?" Carole sighed from behind them.

"No!"

Finn shifted, uncomfortable. "Burt, can I... He's less likely to kill you."

"Go."

Finn was gone a second later.

"Dad-"

"Kurt, sit down," Burt said. He sat himself, Carole standing behind him, hands on his shoulders.

Kurt sat beside his father and attempted a calming breath. "How long has he been living here? You didn't think that was something I should have been involved in?"

"It was my idea," Carole said, locking eyes with Kurt when his gaze snapped to her. "A lot's changed while you've been gone. And it's not your fault," she hastened to add when he opened his mouth. "Dalton has been good for you. You've been safe there. And it's been a hard adjustment.

"We should have tried harder to tell you and that's our fault that we didn't. Everything just got hectic these last few months." She sighed. "It was my idea for Noah to move in with us. Your father and Finn agreed and there hadn't been many options at the time."

"What options? _Why_ would the only option be for Puck to live _here_? And where...he's not in my room, is he?"

"He's sharing with Finn," Burt said. "We traded out his queen for a couple singles."

Placated by the fact that at least Puck wasn't in his room, Kurt nodded. "Now, how about _why he's here_!"

Almost like they'd been rehearsing it from the day Puck moved in, his dad and Carole traded off as they told the story no one had thought should be told over the phone. Carole's eyes teared up as she reminded him that she'd known Puck since he and Finn met in pre-school, that he'd been like another son to her for years, no matter what had happened with Quinn. One fell down her cheek as she looked him dead in the eyes and said _Noah is bisexual_.

Come again?

The idea alone had made Kurt's jaw drop. Literally. Because..._what_? Puck. The bully that had thrown him in a dumpster for a year and a half was bi. Something Kurt honestly wasn't even sure if he believed in. Before Rachel's party and the drama that unfolded after that, he'd never even considered bisexuality. Always saw it as gay or straight, because, if you were going to be with someone the rest of your life, you had to choose. He'd done some thinking after everything. Thought about what Blaine might have been feeling then and the confusion that had to have come with not knowing if you liked one gender or both. Even during his straight phase with Brittany, he'd never considered it. He still didn't fully understand it now.

But..._Puck_?

In a weird way, it almost made sense. With Puck's sexual history, he had to run out of girls eventually. Most learned their lesson after the first time, so repeats weren't likely. If Carole didn't look like she was about to burst into tears or something, he would have snorted and said that of course it would be Puck that ended up sleeping around with guys too.

Then the rest of her sentence kicked into his head and his heart almost dropped.

"_Noah is bisexual and his mother's boyfriend..."_

She hadn't even finished the sentence, but it had been enough for him to understand. He watched her head drop and his dad reach behind him to hold her hand. He watched her shoulders shake for a few seconds and _knew_.

Knew that whatever this guy's reaction had been, it was probably worse than anything Karofsky had ever handed out to him.

"He hurt him bad, son."

His dad now. Voice soft, but still holding a hint of anger. The tone that screamed everything Burt wanted to do to that man with his shotgun.

Carole walked out of the room, hand over her mouth, when his dad started to tell him how Puck had tried to come out to his mom and how her boyfriend had heard. His own eyes started to burn as his dad started to list injuries and the shakily scrawled note Puck wrote when he woke up in the hospital a day later.

_ She just stood there._

It made him sick. Made actual bile rise in his throat. He could taste it as he swallowed it back, a broken _why_ slipping past his lips instead.

"I don't know," Burt sighed, his ball cap clenched in his fists as he twisted it.

Concussion. Three broken ribs. Strangulation. Left wrist broken. Damaged vocal cords from something Burt refused to describe to him.

Puck doesn't talk anymore.

Can't. Won't. They don't know, his dad told him. In the beginning, he said that the doctors thought he wasn't talking because of the trauma to his cords, but now they weren't sure if it was the trauma of the actual event keeping him silent.

"If he can talk, the doctors say it's up to him to decide when. We'll know which it is if and when he does try, but for now, he has a notebook. That girl from Glee, Tina, is taking Sign Language for her foreign language. She's teaching all of us some stuff. The alphabet. Basic words. We're not sure how long this will last, but we're just trying to go with it."

That explained the tiny hand twitches his dad's right hand kept doing when he wasn't strangling (an image of Puck, hands around his neck, flashed across Kurt's vision) his hat. He was running through the alphabet. Probably didn't even realize what he was doing.

They were spelling out God-knows-what absentmindedly as his dad told him that Puck had nowhere else to go. Explained that Puck's little sister had called Finn in hysterics when her mom and her boyfriend walked out, cried that Noah wouldn't wake up. Finn had been the one to get there and call 911. Had been the one Sarah clung to for hours in the hospital waiting room until Mrs. Puckerman showed up and demanded Sarah go home with her. Carole had apparently needed to be held back.

Sarah was still with her mom. The cops, homophobic assholes that they were in this town, had ruled that Ken Miller (Kurt still thought he was an ass) wasn't at fault. Didn't believe a word Puck...wrote. They said Sarah would be safe there and sent her back.

That ruling alone had made Finn punch a wall. He nearly broke his hand.

It had all happened just after Regionals six weeks ago. Literally. Just after. New Directions had won and his dad guessed that Puck had just been going off the high from that. Came out to his mom and...

Kurt realized as his stomach churned that could be the last time he or anyone else ever heard Puck sing. It was then that a tear fell. It just wasn't right. Puck may not have been the best guy Kurt had ever known, but he'd been better since he joined Glee last year. He'd stopped bullying the other Glee kids and himself. Kurt had seen the man in him come out. When he spoke about Beth. When he offered to protect him. Puck wasn't perfect, but even Kurt could admit now that he wasn't a bad guy anymore.

Didn't mean that his original reaction was any less well deserved, because Puck was still his former bully. He may not hate the guy, but...come on.

It didn't stop a second tear, though.

His dad said Puck was still in Glee Club, that he would still be able to participate in it for Nationals at the end of the month. The rules said there had to be twelve members. They didn't say that all twelve members would have to sing. Puck would do his part in the group, dancing with them and playing guitar. Just because he couldn't sing didn't mean he was out.

Kurt smiled softly, proud of the friends he'd left behind at McKinley. They rallied around their own. They were a family.

"And Noah?" he asked softly.

"I think it had something to do with Miller," Burt sighed, hat twisted in his fists again. "He kept flinching every time someone called him Puck. He seemed okay with Carole and Rachel calling him Noah, so we just went with it."

Kurt nodded.

Noah.

Got it.

"Kurt, I know-"

"It's okay."

And it was. Yeah, it was still a little weird to think that Pu-_Noah_ was living with them now and it was even weirder to think that it's because he was bashed. But he understood. He understood why his dad and Carole took him in. He understood why they didn't tell him on the phone. Knew himself well enough to know he would have hung up the second _Noah is moving in_ passed his dad's lips. Part of him wished someone had driven up to tell him, but he wasn't going to split hairs. There wasn't anything that could be done now.

"Is he okay?" he asked, glancing up the stairs of the new house he was still getting used to.

"He's healed. His wrist is out of the cast. Still has a brace, but it's not his writing hand."

Kurt nodded, part of him grateful that he wouldn't have to see the bruises and have to think about what Noah had been through.

He hugged his dad before he left the room. Gave a crushing one to a still softly sobbing Carole in the kitchen and kissed her cheek.

Finn was sitting on the top of the stairs, bottom lip drawn between his lips nervously. He jumped to his feet when he saw Kurt. "Man, I should have told you. Burt told me to, but I didn't know how to bring it up and-"

"Finn. It's okay. My dad explained everything to me."

"Did he tell you not to-"

"I'll call him Noah. Don't worry." He shook his head, eyeing his stepbrother. "You're starting to obsess."

Finn sighed. "I know. I'm just-"

"Finn!" Kurt chuckled, putting a hand on Finn's arm. "He's your best friend. I get it." He glanced at Finn's closed bedroom door.

Finn followed his gaze and nodded. "I think I'll go grab another slice of my mom's cheesecake," he said before he slipped past Kurt and down the stairs.

Kurt stared at the door for a long moment before taking a breath. He knocked softly, turning the knob as he did, and poked his head inside.

"Hey."

TBC

PLEASE REVIEW!


	2. Chapter 2

Hey, everyone! Here's the second chapter! Only one left! Thanks to everyone that's reviewed so far! Hope you like! As always, please review!

Disclaimer: Glee doesn't belong to me.

Silence  
>Chapter Two<p>

Pu—_Noah_ sat cross-legged on the bed closest to the window. Beige and black blankets. Cast iron headboard. Kurt was impressed. It looked classy, especially with the matching furniture and bedding. Better than something anyone else in this house would have picked out.

Looking at him closer, Kurt noticed that Noah had lost some weight. His face looked thinner. The hoodie that used to be just this side of snug looked baggier. His eyes looked darker. Kurt could just barely see the black brace sticking out from under his sleeve of the arm lying in his lap.

Noah's eyes were cautious as he watched him standing awkwardly in the doorway. He felt like a stranger right in that moment. Like he didn't even belong here.

"Hey," he said again, still just as soft and nervous as the first time.

Noah stared at him for another second before he turned back to his notebook and Kurt's face fell. Maybe this wasn't a good idea...

"Sorry. I'll just-"

Noah held up his notebook, waving it slightly until Kurt walked close enough to read it.

_Don't make it weird, dude. Burt told you. Yeah. Yeah. Ha ha. How the mighty have fallen._

"It's not like that!" Kurt exclaimed, thrusting the notebook back at Noah. "Out of everyone, why would I make this into a joke?" He sighed, sitting on Finn's unmade bed (he noticed vaguely that Noah had made his). "Getting home and seeing you was just a shock."

Noah started scribbling again. Kurt wanted to scream. Waiting for the responses was going to be aggravating. He could feel it. It made the conversation feel choppy and they'd barely begun speaking...writing...whatever.

_Sorry. I told Finn to tell you. Idiot didn't listen to me._

"He doesn't listen to most people."

Noah snorted.

"How's rooming with Finn?"

_Used to it. Slept at his house more than enough times as a kid. Least now I have my own bed. The floor in his old room was impossible to sleep on. And he kicked. It was a lose/lose._

Kurt laughed, pushing away the implication that Finn didn't sleep at Noah's. It made him wonder just how many bad boyfriends his mom had had over the years. Made him wonder if Noah's dad had been any better before he realized that he didn't even know how old Noah was when he left. He hadn't even known Noah had a little sister until his dad mentioned her. Sarah. He called her Sarah. Kurt didn't even know how old she was.

He jumped when he felt a jab at his thigh.

Noah stared at him with a raised eyebrow.

_Welcome back to Earth._

"Ha ha," Kurt said dryly. "Very funny."

_I try my best._

Kurt rolled his eyes. "My dad said Tina was teaching all you guys Sign Language?" Noah nodded. "Think she could teach me?"

_She taught Finn and Brittany. At this point, I think she could teach anyone._

Kurt laughed, head thrown back for a second. Mute or not, this was still the same smartass from Glee.

"Teach me?"

They'd only reached "G" by the time Finn came back, each letter of the alphabet written clearly on the paper as they worked their way through and Noah showed him how to shape his hand for each letter. Finn practiced beside them in silence, mouthing words silently to himself and spelling them out to himself. He let out a frustrated noise every time he stumbled or signed the wrong letter.

_Okay, so she mostly taught Finn._

As if on cue, Finn messed up again and Kurt cracked a grin as Noah covered his own with his hand.

"What?"

"Nothing, Finn. Go back to whatever you were spelling."

"What are you laughing at?"

"Nothing, Finn."

"You were laughing at something!"

Noah threw a pillow in Finn's face.

The transition went smoother than Kurt expected it to. There had been one half-asleep slip up where he'd come _thisclose_ to calling Noah Puck. He'd made no more than the "P"-sound when Noah flinched hard enough to drop his pen. He made sure he didn't do it again.

His dad was still playing protector to all three of the teens. The official papers signing Noah into his dad and Carole's custody had been signed earlier that week. Noah wrote at him to shut up when he commented about a certain badass' eyes getting teary.

Burt welcomed him to the family.

Noah signed "thank you".

Carole hugged him and called him sweetheart.

Noah hugged her back.

Finn called him bro.

Noah showed him the sign for "brother".

Kurt smiled at him.

Noah signed "princess".

Kurt's smile dropped and he held up one finger behind his father's back.

It felt weird to walk by Finn and Noah's room. It was like listening in on a phone conversation (though he totally didn't unless it was about him), you only hear one side. The most he ever heard from Noah was the sound of a pen scratching against paper or a sigh. He didn't laugh. It was like he breathed a chuckle. He'd just smile, close his eyes, and exhale through his nose.

Kurt was still trying to figure out the weird Eye Speak the best friends had. He'd watch them at dinner, just staring each other but having an entire conversation at the same time. It was creepy. He'd asked the girls when he hung out with them one day, but none of them understood it any better than he did. The most he got was when Quinn told him not to bother.

_"They've had that thing for years. They're the only ones that understand it."_

They'd all tried to get Noah to speak. Rachel tried to coax him into singing once, but all that did was make a hurt expression cross Noah's face. Before then, Kurt hadn't known that handwriting could be scathing, but the messier-than-usual scrawl of "If I could, I fucking would, Berry" had made him wince when he saw it. She didn't try again.

He'd heard Quinn one time. He didn't know if it was an attempt to make him speak or to just scream, but she'd yelled at him. For sophomore year. For Beth.

She hadn't gotten any further than that before Noah slammed the side of his fist into the vinyl siding on the back of the house. There was still a dent where his fist connected.

Noah had left her crying in the backyard as he stormed inside and shut himself in his and Finn's room for the night.

Quinn barely looked at him anymore.

Nationals came and went. He accompanied them to New York. Watched his friends perform and wished more than anything that he was up there with them. Wished that he could just come home, because Dalton was nice and it was safe, but his family was at McKinley.

They didn't win. Didn't really expect to, but the fact was that they made it. New Directions had grown enough that they could make it to Nationals in the first place.

Kurt was pretty sure he wasn't the only one thinking that they would have won if Noah's voice had been in the mix.

They'd win next year. Their last year.

The last year before all of them went off and Glee Club would be over for them.

Mercedes called him on it at the Fourth of July picnic. Venders had been set up all over the football field and half the town was scattered around, just waiting for the fireworks to start.

_"You like him."_

_ "What? Who?"_

_ "Noah."_

There hadn't even been any use denying it at that point. Not with the way his best friend had been staring at him. He'd caved. Told her that this felt real, more than it ever had with Finn or Blaine. Described the dreams where he heard Noah sing, talk, make any noise other than a sigh.

_"It shouldn't scare me that I might forget what his voice sounded like, but 'Cedes, it does. So much."_

Those were his nightmares. The ones that woke him in the middle of the night and made him sit in front of his laptop for hours, listening to Noah's short solo in sophomore year's "Don't Stop Believing" over and over.

It wasn't the same.

The video from the competition was bad quality and he had to strain to even hear Noah. It didn't sound right, like something in the video was off, because Noah's voice didn't crackle or have a bratty kid whining in the background.

It still didn't stop him from watching it every time one of those nightmares came, though.

He wondered sometimes if he was the only one that was scared. In front of Noah, Finn seemed totally okay with everything, like it didn't bother him that his best friend's voice had been exchanged for words on paper. When he accused him of it, though, Finn had all but exploded.

_"Of course I'm not fucking okay with it, Kurt! I wish he was talking, but he's not! We don't even know if he'll ever be able to! What's the point in forcing him to try if it's not just in his head? Why do that to him?"_

That night, Kurt's nightmares were of exactly that. Noah opening his mouth, trying to talk, and nothing coming out. The crushed look that overtook his face broke Kurt's heart.

There were tears on his face when he woke up.

He didn't watch the Regionals video that night. Couldn't bear the idea of it when every thought of it reminded him of the dream.

Kurt sighed, pushing the blankets away from him. He padded down the stairs as quietly as he could, extra cautious since he was still getting used to the creaks in the new house.

He almost screamed when he got to the kitchen and someone was already there.

Put a hand over his fast-beating heart and glared at Noah from where the other boy sat at the table. His notebook sat beside him as always. Kurt had noticed that it went with him everywhere. No matter where the mute boy went, it was by his side. Just in case.

_What are you doing up?_

"Dream," Kurt murmured, sinking into the chair beside Noah. He yawned.

Noah nodded. He didn't doubt for a second that Noah understood. Something in his gut told him he still had nightmares about what his mom's boyfriend had done to him.

He slid Noah's mug of hot chocolate away from him so he could take a sip. Stuck out his tongue childishly when Noah mouthed _asshole_.

"Thank God," he sighed happily. "You make it with milk. Blaine always insisted on doing it with water."

_Watered down shit. You gotta do it with milk._

Kurt hummed in agreement and stole another long sip before he returned the mug that looked like one of Carole's craft projects. Noah's name was painted in cursive on the crimson mug. White against the red. McKinley's colors. The "M" was beneath his name, and "#20" was painted with pride on the other side of the cup.

"You guys were great at Nationals," Kurt said after a minute.

_You shoulda transferred back for them. You hate Dalton._

"I do not!"

_Do too. I'm mute. Not blind. You were blending in with every other fuckwad._

"I was wearing a uniform. They have a strict dress code over there. What did you want me to do? Bedazzle my blazer?"

_Old you would have._

"I-"

Noah held up his left hand, right scribbling away.

_Blending. Any idiot could see you half-assing it on stage. Even in that duet, you weren't singing like you used to._

"I was not," Kurt insisted, weaker this time.

Noah raised his eyebrow, throwing his left arm over Kurt's shoulder.

_Was too._

Kurt sighed.

_Fuck Dalton._

"It's safe."

_And my home was supposed to be safe. It wasn't. You gotta fight. Who do you have at Dalton? You said you barely speak to that Blaine kid since you two broke up. And you never mentioned any other friends. At least at McKinley, you have the rest of Glee._

Kurt bit his lip, leaning into Noah's side as the other boy rubbed his hand absentmindedly up and down Kurt's arm. He looked up as Noah looked down, the corner of his bottom lip caught between his teeth.

It slid free when Noah kissed him.

TBC

PLEASE REVIEW!


	3. Chapter 3

Hey, everyone! Sorry for the wait! Life got seriously suckish with computer problems and due dates. Hope you liked the story and, as always, please review!

Disclaimer: Glee doesn't belong to me.

Silence  
>Chapter 3<p>

They weren't able to keep things a secret for very long.

...Okay, so it lasted all of five hours. Carole noticed both of them were tired at breakfast. Then, Finn noticed the hickey on Kurt's neck and wasn't _that _awkward...

Kurt had honestly expected his dad to flip. His dad hadn't been thrilled about Blaine and despite being different than who he used to be, Noah still did have a past. So when his dad nodded once slowly and told them to be careful before going back to his meal? Kurt was confused, but grateful.

But mostly confused.

None of their friends looked the least bit surprised when Noah pulled Kurt into his lap during a get-together. Most nodded and went on with what they were doing. Though, Kurt definitely saw Tina sneaking glances whenever he and Noah would kiss.

They drew the line at Rachel's offer to teach them the wonders of anal sex.

Noah threw his notebook at her.

Then motioned for it back so he could tell her to shut up and stop taking drugs.

Kurt thought about it sometimes. Usually when he and Noah would end up curled together on the couch and Noah would fall asleep first. He'd think about the future and where this relationship might go. They'd gone on a few dates. Breadstix, the lake, a romantic and totally illegal dinner on the gym roof.

Four months in and they were happy. School had restarted. Kurt transferred back to McKinley. Tina was teaching him sign language so Noah wouldn't have to use the notebook for everything.

But they weren't perfect. There were arguments in the beginning, stupid ones about PDA. Kurt wanted to hold off on it, overly cautious because Noah had already been hurt enough because of intolerance. Noah didn't want to hide, insisted that after what he's been through, there was no way he could go back in the closet. They ended up compromising. They'd hold hands, share a quick kiss here and there, but they wouldn't make out in the halls. Kurt had the feeling that, if he could have, he would have been grumbling.

Noah's lack of speech worried him sometimes. Not the whys. He knew that. It was everything else. The questions of the important things that should be vocalized. Love. Saying your lover's name during sex. Marriage proposals. He and Noah couldn't do that. Anything that should be vocalized ended up signed or written down. And maybe they'd never reach the proposal stage, but 'will you marry me' or its reply isn't something that should be written on a piece of paper.

He didn't tell Noah that. Couldn't. Noah said he was mute, said it, knew it, but it bothered him. Kurt knew that. He knew every time that Puck was with the group and went to say something before realizing that his vocal cords weren't going to work. The disappointment that would flash across his face _hurt_.

He asked his dad once if that meant anything, if Puck's failed attempts meant that it was physical instead of psychological. It took his dad a minute before he could answer and tell him that the doctors said it was like when someone represses a memory. There may come a time when they want to remember, but they can't regain it in a heartbeat because that's when they want it. It comes back when it comes back.

_If_ it comes back.

It made things more complicated. Noah's muteness was always hanging over both their heads.

When they spoke and Kurt had to wait for Noah to write a response or Noah had to wait until Kurt could sort through the sign language in his head.

When they had sex. He'd always imagined that Noah would be a loud lover with grunts and swears and dirty talk, but he wasn't. He was as silent as ever. He sighed. That was it.

It was hard.

It was the day of their six month anniversary that Kurt swore his heart stopped for a second.

Noah had taken him out to the restaurant a town over. The one where Kurt's parents had had their six month. Kurt could admit that he'd gotten choked up when Noah pulled into the parking lot.

From there, they'd gone back home to an empty house. Finn was with Rachel. Carole had convinced his dad to go away for the weekend. It was just them, lying in the bed together. Kissing. Touching. Having sex.

But it was after everything. When they were lying under the covers, naked and breathless, lazy kisses being shared. When Kurt kissed Noah's neck and Noah sighed.

They both froze.

Kurt shot up, eyes wide as they connected with Noah's. He could have sworn that he'd heard...

"Noah? Did...I thought..."

Noah nodded once.

"Try again?" he whispered in a beg.

Again. He heard it when Noah opened his mouth. Not even a whisper, but he heard it. Just barely heard his name.

His eyes burned as tears filled his vision. Noah started to shake, eyes on him as he kept trying, getting a tiny bit more clear with every attempt until he _really_ heard it.

"K'rt..."

Kurt covered his mouth with his hand as a sob escaped him. He wanted to dive forward and kiss Noah. Celebrate this, but a part of him couldn't believe what he was hearing and was so scared that if he kissed Noah right then that it would go away and break both their hearts.

Noah kissed him when tears started falling from his own eyes. Pulled Kurt against him and kissed him like a miracle had just happened.

One had.

Kurt's heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest when they broke apart and his name slipped past Noah's lips again.

"I love you," he said, tears falling as he pressed his forehead to Noah's.

"'ove you, too."

Carole burst into tears when she, Burt, and Finn all got home and instead of getting a wave from Noah, got a whispered and hoarse _hi_.

Finn surged forward and hugged his best friend. Masculinity be damned. He clung to his best friend and cried.

Even his dad looked teary.

Kurt didn't question for a second if all the hours they'd spent the last night working Noah's voice was worth it.

It was.

So, _so_ much.

The Glee Club's reactions weren't much different. The guys didn't even bother to hide the tears and smiles as the girls all fell apart.

Quinn hugged Noah for a long time. Whispered that she was sorry for everything she said. When Noah said it was okay, she broke.

Within minutes, they were a tangle of limbs on the floor in some kind of group hug that not even Noah could protest.

His voice was never quite the same after. There was a tone to it now, a little rougher than it used to be, that the doctors said was the result of the injury. It didn't stop him from talking. It changed what he sounded like.

He still sang with them, voice a little scratchier now, but Santana said it made him sound more sexy. Kurt had to remind her not to hit on his boyfriend.

_ "Not flirting. Just stating a fact."_

It didn't stop Brittany from kissing her girlfriend just to be sure.

The Glee Club performed at graduation that year, every one of them in their caps and gowns as they swayed and sang along with "Graduation (Friends Forever)". A classic song that would never get old. It was the song that was played at the dance when they finished grammar school and it was the song they sang now, arms over shoulders and tears decorating every cheek.

They got a standing ovation. Parents, Cheerios, even the jocks. Kurt was even almost positive he saw Coach Sylvester clapping.

High school was over. He and Noah would be in New York in the fall, alongside Finn and Rachel. Childhood was over. It was time to move on.

He was confused when the applause ended and the rest of the club stepped back. Looked behind them and wondered if he'd missed some part of the choreography. Went to follow them and Rachel waved him off.

It was him and Noah standing in front of half the town.

Him and Noah up on stage when his boyfriend pulled him against his chest and kissed him like Kurt had never let him kiss him at school. There were some groans from the audience. Santana told them to shut the fuck up. Finn would tell him later that Noah flipped off the crowd.

He was still breathing heavily from the kiss when they broke apart.

Then Noah got down on one knee and Kurt was sure he was going to faint.

Any second now.

He could feel his blood pounding in his head. Heart ready to burst from his chest.

Noah's hand disappeared under his gown only to come back with a black box.

"Oh, Gaga," Kurt breathed, hand over his chest in an attempt to keep the racing organ inside.

"Kurt," Noah said, taking Kurt's other hand in his. "Will you marry me?"

In all his fears when they got together, he'd been so scared that if they reached this point, that that question would end up written in a notebook underneath 'what do you want for dinner?' But it wasn't. Noah spoke it.

He never thought that he'd end up being the one rendered mute as Noah stared up at him, a beautiful platinum band nestled in black velvet.

His vision blurred as he started to nod frantically and Noah slid the ring onto his finger. He was on his feet in a second, sweeping Kurt into another kiss that he never wanted to end. It did end eventually and he held onto Noah, face buried in his neck as he finally found his voice.

"_Yes_."

The End

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